The Legion #7 Review!

Released April 24, 2002
DC Comics, Color
22 Pages

Terror Incognita 2 - Fear of Change

Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers
Oliver Coipel - Pencils
Andy Lanning - Inks
Tom McCraw - Colors
Comicraft - Letters
Mike McAvennie - Editor

Synopsis

The blood moon hangs over Metropolis as Ra's al Ghul monologues to the world.  He is accelerating evolution triggering a process called Hypertaxis, pulling the moon closer to initiate an extinction event.  We get an explanation of the balls that Zoe found last issue.  Some people become "Terrorforms" and zap everyone else into little balls for safeguarding during the upheaval process. Then they pick the best ones to evolve.  Or something. 

VP Winema Wazzo is trying to boss around a SP chief when, to her chagrin, the Legion flies in - Cosmic Boy, Ultra Boy, Kid Quantum, Leviathan, Brainiac 5, Chameleon and Shikari.  They bypass the VP and head straight for the terrorforms.   Brainy tries to short circuit their instructions but is quickly zapped into a seed. They all get after it and Shikari and Cham are soon zapped as well. Cos strategizes and uses his discs to block a terrorform's blast.  

The terrorforms are super strong, taking down Vi at her large size, and Ultra Boy when he's using Ultra Strength. A terrorform tosses Vi into a building with no effort. She shrinks, and is about to be zapped herself when green energy hits the terrorform.  The new arrival, a terrorform with a red mane of hair, communicates with Violet and she realizes its Kinetix.

They go back to help Cos, Jo and Jazmin, and Kinetix sends a suggestion to Cos to blind them, which he does.  It turns out to be a simple solution; remove their weapons. Vi and Kinetix join the rest of the team as they run away. 

Interlude:  Fifteen days out from Xanthu we connect with the Khundian refuge fleet that left Xanthu at the end of LW4 (great reference point there - Jenni and Thom have been at it for two weeks on the planet).  A huge energy surge overtakes them; the Robotican base world heading for Earth.  

We reconnect with Ra's and the Oversight Watch on the lunar terraforming platform. Repulse passive aggressively asks Ra's if they're going to get blamed for the havoc on Earth.  Ra's says they can stay or go, and the OW elects to stay as Venge returns and informs Ra's of the vaporization of Legion World.  

The Legion returns to VP Wazzo's position to borrow their telepath, the same one we met in the LW3 backup story. There is an interesting banter between Jo and Winema about Tinya, Winema is coy about the situation with Tinya and tells him nothing about his pregnant wife.   They connect Winema's adept to Kinetix so that they can 'see' her memories.  Apparently the last time these terrorforms appeared was at the extinction event that took out the dinosaurs, which is what enabled humans to come to the forefront.  Zoe's mystical abilities plus her genotype made her into a hybrid terrorform.  Kinetix then unzaps Brainy, Shikari and Cham.  

Brainy took his time as a seed to come up with a plan, and three hours later, the Legionnaires pop up on the moon with backup.

Commentary

Okay, I had to let this review sit for about a day, because I wanted to be sure that this was how I felt.  I came back and saw some things in a bit of a better light, but not much, because I can't get past the central plot point.

I guess the way I'm approaching this issue is that there is a lot that happens, but also a lot that doesn't make sense.  The story flow is generally fine - we start with the standard DnA intro style when apocalyptic events are happening, this time Ra's al Ghul detailing what is happening across the earth, then jumping into the action.  Those parts, for what it was worth, flowed pretty well.  But the concept of Hypertaxis and the terrorforms as the central point of Ra's plan made this story go sideways for me, bolstered by a lot of little details.  While the mystery of the little purple balls and the large menacing figures had been answered, the explanation for what they do and why left me shaking my head.

Coipel art seemed to be a step down for me from the standard he's set up so far - Ra's looked very simian, which may or may not be intentional, but it jumped out.  Similarly, the details on pages 11 & 12 were lacking for me.  Hero shot on the last page was great though!

Weird little details around the opening monologue. Ra's is intentionally triggering Hypertaxis to make evolution happen, as neither the Blight nor the Rift were enough of a trigger. Is Metropolis a domed city or is that a generic shot of the tides going crazy as the moon approaches the Earth??  The aerial shot looked to be a NYC picture run through a filter - wouldn't this look different 1000 years from now?  There is a frame of things going on as normal. Aren't we told that this is going on worldwide?  Shouldn't there be mass chaos everywhere, environmental as well as sentient given that the moon is literally entering the Earth's atmosphere?  Also, if the trigger to create a mass extinction event is to throw the moon into the Earth, doesn't that wipe out the Earth?  Doesn't Ra's always want to just CLEAN the Earth cause mankind is a horrible steward?  This is where my questioning of using Ra's as the big bad is justified.  Ra's opening monologue/exposition is creepy as it should be, but leaves more questions than answers.  And the question is more like, "I waited six issues for this?!"

So the VP is in charge of a SP security force?  Shouldn't they be spiriting her away in a bunker like I assume they did when the Blight came to town?

Even though I am not a fan of the terrorform concept, that action sequence through Cos blinding them is really good. They pack a wallop. Bad writing/editing scene - Vi's line should have been, "Oh my grife, ZOE?" THEY WERE BEST FRIENDS, for grife's sake. But I'll not go down that rabbit hole again. By the way, does anyone pick up the seeds of the zapped Legionnaires that fell 20 stories to the ground after they got zapped when they were floating and facing off the terrorforms? 

So right on the heels of the apocalyptic Hypertaxis Ra's story, we're getting the tease of an apocalyptic Robotica story on Earth. Great. I'm glad that Ra's took all that effort to rebuild Earth so much in the last year.  Cute "Told you" moment by Dreamer, though.  

We see Winema is still a raging bitch, and that its rubbing off on her adept!  The whole "It" thing referring to Kinetix was annoying. But the explanation of the terrorforms was just... odd...  

Oh! Jo had the seeds so Kinetix could revive Brainy, Cham and Shikari!  Glad they showed someone grabbing them when they bugged out from the fight! Oh, wait...

So let me get this right - well before the humanoid quadruped had evolved, there was some genotype in the existing organisms, a small percentage of dinosaurs and other critters, to turn into these humanoid things, zap everything into seeds with their eye beams until later, when someone sorts out the good ones.  Suck it, Darwin!

Also, what about the meta gene in the DCU?  Surely that plays a part in the calculus?

Zoe is a human from Aleph, but IS magical, so McAvennie only gets a half point off for being a bad editor. Otherwise she wouldn't have had the genotype, right??

Brainy still being able to think as a seed was kind of cool, actually.

This gets a C- from me, and its lucky its not lower.  Ra's plan and his execution of it just doesn't work for me as a plot reveal, although I'll reserve my right to revise that grade if there is a better payoff by the end of the Terra Incognita arc. Also, DnA's apocalypses are starting to feel formulaic. The story pace was fine, but the problem was I didn't like the central tenet of the story itself. McAvennie really did little more as editor than write the letter column, because this whole thing makes ZERO sense in the DCU.  Bring on the big fight with Ra's.